COVID-19 patients from Extendicare Parkside were discharged from hospital while still sick: union

Several residents of the Extendicare Parkside long-term care home who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 were sent home while still sick and without access to oxygen, said Barbara Cape, president of SEIU-West, the union representing health-care workers at the home. 

Cape said it happened after Saskatchewan adopted the Public Health Agency of Canada's guidelines stating a person is no longer infectious after 10 days, a change that also resulted in the health authority under-reporting hospitalizations, a metric the Saskatchewan government used to gauge restrictions.

She said the union never received clarity on whether discharging residents on the 10th day was an official Saskatchewan Health Authority policy and that there were times where residents would return from acute care "still sick."

"I don't know what the medical rationale was, and I've never been told, but that was a political decision," Cape said. 

The SHA and a spokesperson for Extendicare Parkside said they followed direction from the province's medical health officer and public health "around the appropriateness of a resident returning to one of our homes from the hospital." 

"The attending physician would discharge a patient from hospital and return to the home based on the patient's condition and ability of the home to meet care needs on return," said Debbie Sinnett, executive director of continuing care for Regina, in a prepared statement. She was not made available for an interview.

Residents allegedly returned home not stabilized, without oxygen

Cape said there were incidents where residents were discharged from hospital while still presenting with COVID-19 complications.

"It's a bit difficult to send a senior or an elderly resident back to a long-term care facility when they have other health issues that are complicated, or not even related to COVID. They need to be in a stable environment," Cape said.

A lack of oxygen at the Extendicare facility presented further complications, Cape said. 

"Folks were being sent back without being clearly stabilized," Cape said. "It was scary for the staff, but I'm sure scary as hell for the residents because now they're home, and trying to recover. It was just a bad, bad scene."

The SHA did not address why patients who needed oxygen were discharged, but said it provided oxygen concentrators to the facility. Extendicare Parkside also contracted a local supplier and rented several more to meet the needs of residents, the SHA said. 

"At no time during Parkside's outbreak has the home been without the oxygen supplies needed for resident care," said a spokesperson for Extendicare Parkside in an email. 

Cape maintains the SHA didn't properly communicate to Extendicare Parkside that folks were getting sent back.

"I don't think Extendicare realized the extent of how much they would have to up their oxygen orders," Cape said.

Staff 'believed they were sending them to get better'

Cape said the return of sick residents traumatized staff.

"When residents were sent to hospital there was a hope they'd be able to get more intensive care and be able to get healthy again," Cape said, adding staff "believed they were sending them to get better."

"Seeing them come back, still sick, staff would throw up their hands and say 'Why isn't anybody helping us, why isn't anybody seeing what's going on here?'"

SEIU-West has been raising issues for nearly a decade about staffing levels at long-term care facilities in Saskatchewan, including Parkside Extendicare, which became the site of a major COVID-19 outbreak. In total, 41 residents died and more than 200 residents and staff were infected.

There have been no new cases since Dec. 26, 2020, Extendicare said. 

Saskatchewan's ombudsman has launched an investigation into the outbreak after a formal request from the government of Saskatchewan in late January. The report is expected in late June or early July, said Cape.

"Being outraged is good, being angry is good, but coming out of this ombudsman inquiry, I'd love to sit down with the ministers of health. I want them to hear from those staff, and the family members. I want them to understand intimately what these folks went through," Cape said.

'It was absolute trench work for people there'

Cape said other deficiencies at the home were exacerbated during the outbreak. 

She said that when the pandemic started, staff at Parkside Extendicare were given one mask a day.

The masking policy did improve, Cape said, but it required staff to submit their mask for inspection by a supervisor before they'd get another.

Another challenge was moving bodies from Extendicare Parkside after somebody died. 

"One of our members told me about the number of residents she put into body bags for transport, because funeral home staff would not do it," Cape said. 

"I use that as a beacon for what people went through at Parkside Extendicare. It was absolute trench work for people there."

It was especially tough on those dying within the home, Cape said. 

"Residents are our family. That confusion, that tension absolutely would have impacted their final days, and it would have been difficult, let alone they weren't able to see their immediate family. I think that is probably the most desperate, and sad way to depart this world and it's not fair," Cape said.